Volume II: Filmography

LIFE'S PATHWAY

September 30, 1913 (Tuesday)

Length: 2 reels (2,014 feet)

Character: Drama

Director: Thomas N. Heffron

Scenario: Lloyd F. Lonergan

Cast: Madeline and Marion Fairbanks (as Bessie [Bess, in some accounts] and Anna, at the age of about 12 years), Florence LaBadie (in two roles, as Bessie and Anna as adults), Muriel Ostriche

Note: This film was advertised as the "triumphant return" of the Thanhouser Twins, who had departed from Thanhouser for a stage engagement of many months' duration.

ARTICLE, The Moving Picture World, August 23, 1913:

"THE THANHOUSER TWINS BACK. The Thanhouser Twins, as they are called, shortly reappeared in New Rochelle pictures, after a long absence. They were with a theatrical production the past season. C.J. Hite gave them the high sign and they are occupying a Thanhouser dressing room once more. They opened the return date with a two-reel drama called Life's Pathway, which Lloyd Lonergan wrote particularly for them. Tom Heffron put the piece on. At the Thanhouser studio last year, Lucius Henderson directed the twins, and he got so well acquainted with them that he could call either one by her right name. Cash bets are being laid on the possibility of Director Heffron's duplicating this feat. It's nice for a director to know which twin he wants to call down. Just one other Thanhouserite got the twins right proper names last year. This was the cashier. On salary day they always made themselves clear to her."

SYNOPSIS, Reel Life, September 27, 1913:

"Life's Pathway, from the same pen as The Farmer's Daughters,' shows what a versatile dramatist Mr. Lonergan is. The two plays could scarcely be more unlike - the imagination of the author ranging from the purely amusing in one to serious subjects in the other, treated with supreme realism and impressiveness. Life's Pathway is a thoroughly thoughtful, artistic piece of work. It is a study in the appalling contrasts in conditions of life - brought home forcibly by the case of twin sisters, separated as babies, and developed by widely divergent circumstances into two utterly different women. Anna and Bess are left orphans in babyhood, and neighbors of their mother, poor women like herself, agree to take them and bring them up. The husband of one of these becomes wealthy, and Anna is spoiled by a life of idleness and selfishness, while Bess, left in a poverty-stricken environment, develops sympathy for the strugglers everywhere around her - by her own efforts, becomes a trained nurse, and gives herself to alleviating the sufferings of her neighbors.

"Anna's one ambition is to catch a rich husband. She marries a broker, reported to be a millionaire, but proving to be by no means so rich as was supposed. Anna's extravagance has embarrassed him, and when the crash comes, he flees the state under an assumed name, to avoid imprisonment, leaving his wife alone and penniless. Her idle life, and lack of training for anything useful, finds her helpless. She is utterly unfit to earn her own living - and, gradually, she sinks lower and lower. Bess, meanwhile, has become the superintendent of a refuge home for women. She is full of joy and comfort for all with whom she comes in contact - and everyone who knows her loves her. How Anna, worn out and sick, finds her sister again - though neither is known to the other - and how their pathways in life cross at last, some slight shadow of memory falling from Anna's personality across Bess' intuitive mind - concludes with rich suggestiveness and intense pathos, the drama of these twin sisters."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, October 11, 1913:

"A two-reel number which gets up a strong interest in the life drama of twin girls. They are first seen as babies, then as children of perhaps 10 years, and later Florence LaBadie doubles on the part and plays both sisters. One girl is adopted by rich people and later falls in the social scale after ruining her husband by extravagance. The second sister becomes a settlement worker. All of the closing part of the picture was hurried and ineffective, which was the more disappointing because the theme was a strongly dramatic one and should have worked up to a satisfactory climax."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, October 15, 1913:

"A poor mother dies, and her twin daughters are adopted, one each by neighbors. Ten years later Ann's foster parents are wealthy and she is a spoiled child. Bessie's foster parents have remained poor, but she is well brought up. Later Ann marries a broker because she believes him rich, but her extravagances drive him to default and flight. Bessie, meanwhile, has become a nurse in the slums. Ann, penniless and in want, seeks shelter where Bessie is located, and dies in the care of her sister, each without knowing the other. The cynical plot is a bit vague in its conclusion, but yet it has enough interest to make it a fair offering to the exhibitor. Acting and photography are of average quality."

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